Pets and Ponds

I posted pictures of my two four-legged children. My dog Schatze, is the love of my life (next to the spousal unit, of course). We got her when she was just 10 weeks old and she will be 14 in January...if she makes it that long. We found out in August that she has a very invasive, aggressive cancer so we don't know how long she'll decide to stay with us. And we won't be the kind of people that keep her around for our sake. That's just not the right thing to do. But for now, she's eating well and still running around the yard and patiently waiting for "momma" to get home each night and give her a cookie (or as thinks they are - the meaning of life).

My little fur-ball cat Zippy is, well, just a cat. But a beautiful one at that. He's a pure bred Maine Coon, weighs almost 20 pounds, is about 8 years old and probably the most interesting, personable and entertaining cat I've ever known. We inherited him 2 years ago due to a death in the family and he has grown accustomed to us - and the dog. Actually, they always gotten along great. He loves to be pampered and I have a groomer come to the house every 6 weeks or so to keep all that long hair trimmed. His latest quirk is to get in the bathtub (right after someone has showered) and lay down for one of his eighteen naps of the day. We haven't quite figured that one out yet.

My pond is my little corner of the world in the back yard. We had this terrible flower bed at the corner of the deck and the sidewalk that I could never get anything to grow in. So we gave up and filled it with marble chips and said "oh well." Then a neighbor two doors down put in a small pond in her back yard and after watching and helping her - we decided to put on in that "dead" spot in my backyard. I dug the entire thing by shovel in two days then the next weekend, we put the liner down, built the waterfall and added water. This was constructed in October so it was too late to put new fish in the pond. The following spring I bought several gold fish (comets) and two small koi. Well, the "small" koi have grown to be almost too large for the pond. And unfortunately, one of them died this past spring. He was beautiful - yellow and black. He looked like a weird shark swimming around so I had named him Jaws. The other koi was a Jerusalem Carp - solid black. At first I named her Molly but then, as she grew bigger and bigger, we nicknamed her "Red" for Red October. My husband said she looked like a huge Russian sub slowing rising up from the bottom. But Red soon became too large for our pond so she has moved across the street to yet another neighbor's pond (much bigger and can accommodate bigger fish). The latest venture with the pond is a slow leak that we haven't been able to put our finger on yet. If the weather holds, we're going to move the rest of the fish to my neighbor's big pond, let our pond drain and try to figure out where the problem is. Will keep you posted.